Marriage Disintegration

WARNING: This chapter contains descriptions of adultery.

October 28, 2023

Kumiko was battling a Class Five magical beast by herself early in the morning on a weekend. The beast, who had emerged right next to her house and bore the appearance of a small but aggressive monkey with four eyes and six sets of limbs, was angrily screeching at her while it picked up rocks from the ground and threw them in her direction. The beast had already killed and partially eaten a squirrel, the head and upper body of which was lying on the ground nearby. Every time she tried to approach it, the beast charged at her and nearly grabbed her or even tried to bite her, forcing her to retreat.

“Damn it,” she muttered to herself as she was forced back once again. “This should be easy…” She shouted at the monkey-like magical beast, “How are you this hard to kill?! You’re small as Hell!”

The beast once again let out a cry of anger at her in response and charged at her, throwing a rock as it did so. The rock narrowly missed her head, prompting her to charge at the beast as well with her sledgehammer and end the rather annoying back-and-forth with the magical beast once and for all. As she reached the beast, she swung down at its head, but it suddenly grabbed the head of the hammer and held it tightly in its grasp before forcing it back at her, with her narrowly dodging the sledgehammer’s head when it came back.

As the beast then swung at her with its two right arms, she yelled as she got sideswiped by the fists, barely avoiding a direct hit, “Fuck!” She then swung her sledgehammer at the side of the beast, and this time, she scored a hit, causing the beast to scream in pain and cough up blood when it fell to the ground. The beast got up back on its feet and charged at her, albeit struggling to stay straight as it ran due to its injuries.

Seeing her chance, Kumiko swung one more time at the beast, this time nailing it right in the head and instantly killing it with a hard blow to the skull. As the beast gasped for air with a split head and blood pouring out of its mouth, its killer took a deep breath and looked around, noting in her head that her attack had spilled blood all over the ground and on the wall of the house she lived in.

“Ugh, finally,” she muttered to herself before pulling out her phone and taking several pictures of the magical beast’s corpse and the scene of the battle for her report to the Agency. Once she was done taking pictures, she held out her left hand and de-transformed back into her pajamas. Thankfully, she had gotten no blood on her body and only got a small amount on her magical huntress outfit, meaning that her pajamas would not be stained. As she began to walk back to her house, she thought to herself, “I could use some improvement. A battle like that against a Class Five shouldn’t have been so hard for me.”

Before she walked into her house, she grabbed the mail from her mailbox and then opened the door. She saw her father sitting down at the kitchen table and drinking a cup of coffee. The two shared the same hair and eye color, and their facial structures were rather similar as well. There was no mistaking that she was his daughter. He noticed her walk in and asked her, “Oh, hey there, Kumiko. Why did you get up so early?”

“Oh, uh,” Kumiko said in response, awkwardly trying to find an explanation for why she was up so early. “I was just getting the mail for you. I woke up a bit early, and I decided to just start my day instead of going back to sleep.”

“Ah, I see,” he replied before taking another sip of coffee. “I get like that sometimes. If you want, I can get you some coffee to help you stay awake.”

“Sure,” she replied with a faint smile. “That would be nice, Dad.”

As her dad poured her a cup of coffee, he told her, “I wish I didn’t have to head into work today, but I told my boss I’d do some overtime today in exchange for not having to do any for a whole week.”

“It’s fine,” Kumiko told him. “Listen, I get it. You’re busy at work, especially since it’s just the two of us.”

“And especially since your mother won’t speak to either of us anymore.” He sighed as he handed her her coffee. “I wish she would just get over the whole trans thing, Kumiko. She’s gotta accept that this is who you

are now.”

“Believe me,” she told her father. “I’ve tried.” She took a sip of her coffee and sighed, feeling down about her mother’s rejection of her identity as a girl. “It’s horrible.”

“I know, Kumiko.” Her father patted her on the shoulder to comfort her. “Don’t give up just yet. There’s always a chance. Besides, you’ll always have me. I’m proud to call you my child regardless of who you are, and if you’re my daughter, then you’re my daughter.”

Kumiko smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

“I know it sounds really corny,” he admitted to her. “But it’s true.”

“It’s not corny. I’ve heard a lot worse. Trust me.” The two then shared a brief laugh. “Well, I gotta go to work. Have a good day at school. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Kumiko said as he left the house to head to work. When he shut the door behind him and left Kumiko alone, she looked up at the clock and said, “These magical beasts need to stop coming so early in the day.” As she yawned and then pulled out her phone again to start writing the report of the battle, she added, “At least it’s a weekend, though.”

…

Meanwhile, Hana was in her room, pacing around early in the morning as she pondered something that was clearly troubling her. “I’m conflicted as Hell,” she said to herself. “Do I expose him or not?” As she paced, a screenshot of a text was clearly visible on her phone, which laid on the desk next to her bed.

DAD: hey there Yumi, I got some free time after work tonight, how about we fuck nice and hard?

It was clear that Kaito had accidentally texted his own daughter when he meant to text the family’s maid Yumi for a night of sex behind his wife’s back. Although he had assumed that Hana had not read the text before he deleted it, she in fact had managed to screenshot the text, giving her all the proof she needed to expose him for his affair. “I mean,” she then said to herself. “I’ve suspected he was cheating on Mom for a while now, but this is irrefutable.” As she laid back down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, she asked herself, “Why am I so conflicted on this anyway?”

As she continued to look at the red ceiling above her, she thought she heard a tapping sound on the window behind her and turned around to see who or what was causing it. Instead, what she found was that nothing was tapping on the window, or, at least, nothing she could see. Confused, she got up and opened the window to look around, finding nothing around the house that was near her room. As she continued to look around, she felt a drop of rain hit her head and looked up, finding the clouds to be rather dark and feeling the wind begin to pick up. She then closed the window and turned back around, but upon doing so, she found something that was not in her room before.

Hana looked at a black amulet necklace that had been left on the floor and picked it up, saying to herself, “How did this get into my room?” The amulet was of a rather simple design, containing a pitch black crystal that seemed to be similar in appearance and touch to onyx. However, the border around the stone seemed to be made of a hard but somewhat fleshy substance that was also colored black, almost as if it was made of the skin of an animal or even a person. The necklace chain appeared to be made of regular metal linked together in tiny rings. “This is too weird,” Hana said to herself. “The stone inside the necklace is really pretty, though.”

On a hunch, Hana put the necklace on and then looked at herself in the mirror to see how well it would fit her. Seemingly impressed with the results, she smiled and took the necklace off, placing it on her dresser before picking up her phone and pulling up the screenshot of her father’s accidental text once more. She then began to text her mother, getting a response to her first text after about a minute of waiting that, for her, felt almost like hours passing by.

HANA: Mom, there’s something you need to know about Dad, and it’s serious.

MOM: Honey what’s wrong?

HANA: You need to read this.

She then sent the screenshot to her mother, taking a deep breath and telling herself, “This has to be done.” Once it was sent, she waited another minute to let her mother read the screenshot and take it all in. She thought to herself, “If I had to guess, she’s probably at a loss for words. I would be, too.”

Then, after about a minute had passed, her phone vibrated upon her mother calling her. As soon as Hana answered silently, her mother demanded from her, “How the Hell did you get that text?!”

“He must have sent it to me by accident,” Hana explained to her. “He deleted it very soon after, but not before I was able to screenshot it. I don’t think he even knew I read it.”

“God damn it,” Ayumi said over the phone. “What the Hell… Look, Hana, I’m sorry you have to hear me speak like this, but…”

“I get it. I understand why you’re angry, Mom. Where are you anyway? I’m surprised you’re not home.”

“Oh, uh…” Ayumi was in fact at the home of her own secret lover, with whom she had been cheating on Kaito for quite some time as well. As she laid in bed next to him, she lied and told Hana, “I was just out at the office. I forgot something here.”

“Ah, okay.” Hana thought to herself, “I have a hunch she’s lying.”

“Look, Hana, don’t worry about this, okay? This is between me and your father. I’m gonna come home and have a word with him and Yumi-san. Expect me back home in about forty minutes.”

“Alright.”

“And remember, Hana, I love you.”

“I love you, too. Goodbye.” Hana then hung up with her mother and sighed, putting the phone down. The whole time, her father had also been in the house, but he had no idea what had just transpired or what would soon happen between him and his wife. She thought to herself, “My mom was definitely lying. It should only take her about fifteen minutes to get to work normally, twenty max if the traffic is bad. What if… What if she was also keeping something like this from me and Dad?”

At the home of the man she had been sleeping with on the side, Ayumi got out of bed and began to get dressed, having been totally nude before due to her previous sexual activities. Her paramour, who was a coworker of her’s, asked her, “Ayumi-san, what happened?”

“My husband’s been fucking our family maid,” she told him as she put her bra on. “I hate to say it, but I’m not surprised he’s found another woman. Even so, for him to text our daughter about how much he wants to fuck the maid is going too far.”

In disbelief, he replied, “He texted your daughter?!”

“It was probably an accident. God, I’m hoping it was an accident. Either way, I’m gonna go right the fuck home and have a little chat with him.” It was clear based on her tone of voice that she was incredibly angry at Kaito. “I’m sorry for cutting our activities short, but this is something I gotta do.”

“It’s fine. Take your time. If you need to come back over, let me know, okay?”

“Thanks.” Ayumi then finished getting dressed and ran out of the room, determined to head home as soon as she could to confront her husband.

Meanwhile, back at the Miyashita family home, Hana was still in her room and thinking about what she had just done when she heard a knock at her door. Kaito then said through the door, “I gotta head out to meet some people in the Peers’ Club and hand over some papers for a meeting next week. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

“Okay,” Hana replied to him. She then looked towards the window in her room and said to herself, “What would my great-grandfather think of our family now?” Her great-grandfather, the last person to actually hold a title of nobility in her family prior to the abolition of the Japanese nobility in 1947, was someone that Hana looked up to even though she had never met him due to his death prior to her birth. In her mind, her family had fallen far from the height of their power and success when he had been a Count. Her and her family’s membership in the Peers’ Club, the organization that kept the former nobility together, was effectively the only tie she had with the old system.

After thinking about her family’s past for a few moments, she looked to the mysterious amulet that had shown up in her room. As she did, she heard the rain start to come down much harder than before, tapping the window glass many times as the wind then picked up and produced an audible gale that her walls could only muffle and not block out entirely.

“What brought that amulet to my room, and why?”

…

A few hours later, while Ruka was completing homework as well as a few pieces of paperwork from the Agency in her living room, she heard the doorbell to her apartment ring and got up. As she opened the door, she found Hana and Yoshiro standing before her. “Oh, hey guys. What’s up?”

“We need to talk to you,” Hana then said to her.

Concerned, Ruka asked them, “Is it about me?”

“No, no, no,” Hana assured her. “It’s…”

Yoshiro added, “It’s about Hana-senpai.”

“Come on in,” Ruka said to both of them, prompting them to enter her apartment and take off their shoes. As all three walked into the living room, Ruka asked them, “What’s wrong?” It was at that point she noticed that Hana was wearing the black amulet, which she had never seen before. “I don’t recall her wearing a necklace with an amulet like that before,” she thought to herself. “Is it new?”

Hana sighed and then asked Ruka, “Have you ever noticed anything odd about my parents in the past month and a half that we’ve been teammates?”

Ruka’s mind immediately flashed back to when she witnessed Yumi having oral sex with Kaito during Hana’s birthday party. “I… What?”

“Did they act off around you?”

“What prompted this?”

Yoshiro turned to Hana and told her, “I can tell her if you want.”

“No, it’s fine,” she told him. She then turned back to Ruka and confessed, “I know for a fact that both my mother and my father are cheating on each other.”

Ruka was surprised. “You… You know they are?”

“I have a text from my father that he accidentally sent me to prove it, and my mother admitted to sleeping with a coworker of her’s during their argument at my house.”

Deciding to come clean about what she had seen at the party, Ruka sighed and told the two of them, “Now, what I say next doesn’t get repeated anywhere, okay?”

Assuming she would make it about herself, Yoshiro asked her dismissively, “What could you possibly have that’s relevant to this? This is about Hana-senpai, not you.”

“Shut it,” Ruka retorted. “This isn’t the time.”

“Kishio, you-“

Hana then placed a hand on Yoshiro’s shoulder to stop him. “She’s right. You two can argue later. I wanna hear what she has to say.”

Yoshiro, feeling bad, apologized to both of them with, “I’m sorry.”

“Anyway,” Ruka then said. “Hana, I saw your maid and your father together upstairs at your birthday party.”

Hana closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. “And what were they doing?”

“I’m not gonna beat around the bush. Your maid was sucking your dad’s dick, and he was talking dirty the whole God damn time. I could hear everything, and I mean everything.”

“Damn it,” Hana said to herself, angry with her father for doing such a thing on such a day. “On my damn birthday of all times. Why then?”

Yoshiro patted her shoulder and back to comfort her. “I’m so sorry, Hana-senpai.”

“So,” Ruka then asked her. “Where do we go from here?”

“My parents are already talking about a divorce,” Hana answered. “The fact they’ve both been doing this behind each other’s back… It’s just… I’ve always suspected at least one of them was cheating on the other. I’ve suspected that for a few years, even. What I didn’t expect was both of them doing it, and my dad doing it with our maid.”

Ruka replied in disbelief at her situation, “Crazy shit, man…”

“By the way,” Hana then told both of them, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves and put on the normally confident tone of voice she had. “Keep all of this between us for now. It’s not often people get to see me like this, and I’d like to keep it that way. After all, a leader shouldn’t show weakness in front of those they lead.”

Yoshiro asked her, “Will you be okay?”

Hana smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “Of course. I’ve been through adversity before, Yoshiro-kun. If I can fight magical beasts every day and have no problems, I’ll get through this. Even if my parents’ marriage falls apart, my commitment to the Fox Knights will not waver.”

“You can take a break if you want. I can be the temporary leader if you need to step back for a bit.”

“I appreciate the offer, but as of now, that won’t be necessary, Yoshiro-kun.”

All three of them then heard a phone begin to ring in the room. Yoshiro told the others, “That’s me. Hang on.” He pulled out his phone and saw that the call was from his mother. “Sorry, guys. I gotta take this.” He answered the phone with, “Hello?”

“Yoshiro,” said his mother. “Are you still with Hana?”

“Yeah. What’s going on?”

“Oh, nothing. Just be sure to be back home within an hour, okay? We got some work to do around the house before dinner.”

“I know, Mom. I’ll be back in about thirty to forty-five minutes, okay?”

“That’s fine.”

“I’ll start cleaning in the kitchen when I get there.”

“Perfect. I’ll see you then, okay? I love you.”

“I love you, too. Bye.” Yoshiro then hung up with his mother and told the other two, “I gotta go help my mom with work around the house soon.”

“You guys can head out now if you want,” Ruka told both of them.

“I can stay here for a bit,” Hana told them. “I just need to get away from the house for a bit.”

Yoshiro asked her with a hint of worry in his voice, “Are you sure? You can come with me if you want.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, Yoshiro-kun.” Hana told him with a comforting smile, “Thank you for helping me out today, but I don’t want you to run late. Helping your mother’s important, especially since it’s just the two of you.”

Yoshiro somewhat begrudgingly agreed. “I see.” He then got up and told the two of them, “I’ll see you guys later.”

“Bye-bye.”

Once Yoshiro left the apartment, Ruka asked Hana, “Was he bothering you at all?”

“No,” she insisted. “He wasn’t bothering me at all. I just didn’t want to make him late.”

“Ah… What do you mean by it’s just him and his mom anyway?”

“While I won’t reveal too much out of respect for his privacy,” Hana explained. “I can say that he and his mother live alone. His father hasn’t been in the picture, so to say, for quite some time. He hasn’t seen him since he was about four years old.”

“So it is really just him and her…” Ruka felt bad for Yoshiro, thinking to herself, “Damn… He’s been without a dad for nine years at this point. At least I know my parents can’t be here even if they wanted to since they’re dead. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have a parent who you know is still around but chooses not to see you. I thought my extended family not giving a shit about me was bad. What kind of person does that to their own child?”

“Anyway,” Hana then said to move the conversation back to what was happening to her. “I got a few more hours to spend before I absolutely have to go back home and face whatever is going on there now.”

“I got some more homework and some paperwork from the Agency to do,” Ruka explained. “But it shouldn’t take too long. Give me about twenty-five minutes.”

“I can help you if you want.”

“Nah, it’s fine.”

“I insist. It’ll keep my mind off of the impending divorce.”

Ruka looked at the homework and the stack of paperwork from the Agency at the table and sighed. “Alright, fine. I guess I could use some help.” As the two walked over to the table and sat next to each other, Ruka then asked her, “By the way, uh…”

“Hm?”

“What’s with the necklace?”

“Oh, this?” Hana then lifted up the amulet to show it to Ruka. “It’s new. I just got it yesterday, actually.” She thought to herself, “It would take too long to explain how I actually got it, and even I still don’t know the full truth. I’ll just say I was given it by my parents the day before.”

“It looks pretty,” Ruka said as she examined it. “It’s all black?”

“Yeah. All black. I don’t know how much it costs, but I’m sure it cost quite a bit.”

“It sure as Hell looks expensive. Did your parents get it for you?”

“Yeah. I guess you can say it’s their unintentional parting gift before their marriage falls apart completely. Truth be told, in hindsight, a divorce was probably inevitable at some point in the future.” Hana sighed as she set the pendant back down. “I’ll hold onto it as long as I can.”

…

Ruka and Hana went out on patrol together after they finished the former’s homework and Agency paperwork. Due to the colder weather, both wore light coats over their casual clothes, with Hana’s being a dark shade of blue and Ruka’s being gray and black. As they walked past a nearby train station, Hana asked Ruka, “Did you talk to Murata-senpai at all about that battle she had this morning?”

“Yeah. She texted me about it early in the morning. She says she wants to train more since the battle was a bit harder for her than she expected.”

“What was the magical beast she fought exactly?”

“Some weird monkey creature with four arms and four eyes,” Ruka explained. “It was super strong, too. It grabbed the sledgehammer’s head and almost threw it right back at her when she tried to smash its head with it. She feels embarrassed since it was a Class Five.”

“Tell her it’s fine. Reports aren’t always accurate about what class a magical beast is, after all. That could have been a Class Four if more info was given to Dispatch by whoever called it in.”

“That’s exactly what I said. Even so, she was insistent she needed to get better, and I’m not gonna say no to someone who wants to train more. You can’t train too much for this kind of work.”

“Right, you are.”

They then both got texts on their phone and quickly pulled them out to read them. As they did, Ruka’s eyes widened with anticipation while Hana sighed. “Holy shit,” Ruka said to her leader. “Are you reading this?”

“Yep,” Hana nodded. “And it’s only a few blocks away.”

“A fucking Class One now of all times,” Ruka commented as she acknowledged the mission she had been given by the Agency’s dispatchers, followed by Hana. “We’re gonna need some help.”

“I’m sending out a group text to the entire Fox Knights right now,” Hana said as she quickly typed away on her phone. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”